Karen Blough joined the SUNY Plattsburgh art faculty in 1999. Prof. Blough received
her Ph.D. from Rutgers University in 1995 with a doctoral thesis entitled Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana Codex Barberini latinus 711: A Late Tenth-Century Illustrated
Gospel Lectionary from Reichenau. She has regularly presented her work on early medieval manuscript illumination and
female abbatial patronage in the Middle Ages at several professional conferences,
including among others the annual conference of the College Art Association, the International
Medieval Congress at Leeds (Great Britain), and the Annual International Conference
on Medieval Studies at Kalamazoo (Michigan), and the biennial conference of the Early
Books Society. Prof Blough has served as a peer reviewer for various journals and
publishers and for the National Endowment for the Humanities.
While on the faculty at SUNY Plattsburgh, Professor Blough taught courses on ancient,
medieval, and Renaissance art, book art, Latin American art, and, as the first recipient
of the Rabin Fellowship in Judaic Perspectives, premodern Jewish art.
Blough, K. (2025) “The Abbatial Effigies from Quedlinburg: Conceptualisation, Significance and
Function.” In C. Steer and P. Cockerham (Eds), Tomb Monuments in Medieval Europe vol. 1 (Donington, UK: Shaun Tyas Publications, forthcoming)
Blough, K. (2024) “The Stag Hunt and the Fountain of Youth in the First Darmstadt Haggadah:
Imaging Jewish Persecution and Celebrating the Hebrew Community in Late-Fifteenth-Century
Trent,” Journal of the Early Book Society 27 (2024): 1-39.
Blough, K., ed. (2023) A Companion to the Abbey of Quedlinburg in the Middle Ages. Leiden: Brill, 2023
Blough, K. (2023) “Bernward of Hildesheim (960-1022), Routledge Resources Online – Medieval Studies (DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9780415791182-RMEO57-1)
Blough, K. (2023) “Introduction” and “Abbatial Effigies and Conventual Identity at St. Servatius,
Quedlinburg,” In K. Blough, ed. A Companion to the Abbey of Quedlinburg in the Middle Ages. Leiden: Brill, 2023
Blough, K (2021) “Adoption, Adaptation, and Subversion of Christian Motifs in the First Darmstadt
Haggadah,” Journal of the Early Book Society 23 (2021): 1–26
Blough, K. (2018). “Szent Móric lándzsája mint a pogányság elleni hadjárat része az Ottó-korban,”
Világ-Történet 2018/2: 287–310 (Hungarian translation of “The Lance of St. Maurice as a component
of the early Ottonian campaign against paganism”)
Blough, K. (2017). Review of Jennifer P. Kingsley, The Bernward Gospels: Art. Memory, and the Episcopate in Medieval Germany, caa.reviews (http://dx.doi.org/10.3202/caa.reviews.2017.33)
Blough, K. (2016). The Lance of St Maurice as a component of the early Ottonian campaign against
paganism. Early Medieval Europe, 24(3), 338–361
Blough, K. (2015). Implications for Female Monastic Literacy in the Reliefs from St. Liudger’s
at Werden. In V. Blanton, V. O’Mara, & P. Stoop (Eds.), Nuns’ Literacies in Medieval Europe: The Kansas City Dialogue (151–169), Turnhout: Brepols.
“The Stag Hunt and Fountain of Youth in the First Darmstadt Haggadah as Reflections
of Jewish Experience in Late Fifteenth-Century Trent,” Early Book Society Eighteenth
Bienniel Conference, University of Limerick (Ireland), July 12, 2023
“The Abbatial Effigies from Quedlinburg in the Medieval and Modern Era,” Church Monuments
Society online lecture (https://churchmonumentssociety.org/event/the-abbatial-effigies-from-quedlinburg-in-the-medieval-and-early-modern-era),
March 4, 2023
“Synagogal Representation in the First Darmstadt Haggadah and the Fate of Heidelberg's
Jews,” 108th College Art Association Annual Conference, Chicago, IL, February 11,
2020
“Adoption, Adaptation, and Subversion of Christian Motifs in the First Darmstadt Haggadah,”
Early Book Society Sixteenth Biennial Conference, University College Dublin, Dublin
(Ireland), July 10, 2019
“A House of Holiness at the Ends of the Earth: Medieval Memories in the Convents of
New France,” International Medieval Congress, University of Leeds (UK), July 5, 2018
“An Avenue to Glory: Women and Their Books in the First Darmstadt Haggadah,” Dutch
Studies Colloquium on Women and the Book in the Germanic World, University of Pennsylvania,
March 31, 2018
“Staging the Middle Ages of St. Servatius at Quedlinburg,” International Medieval
Congress, University of Leeds (UK), July 6, 2017
“The Body’s Here, the Tomb’s There, and the Effigy’s behind that Pier: Necropolitics
at Medieval Quedlinburg,” 51st International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo,
Michigan, May 15, 2016
“Family Ties: Heraldic Imagery on Abbatial Effigies at Quedlinburg,” 91st Annual Meeting
of the Medieval Academy of America, Boston, Massachusetts, February 26, 2016
